Game ‘Stinks,’ So Iona’s Coach Vents

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. — It was after one of Iona’s easiest practices of the season, in which the team spent about 45 minutes working on — gasp! — its halfcourt offense, when Coach Tim Cluess ambled over to a folding chair in the empty gym, crossed his legs and began to enumerate the reasons he disdained the current state of college basketball.

“The product stinks,” he said.

The scoring average in Division I is as low as it has been since the 1950s, and Cluess has about a dozen theories why. He can be cagey about issues surrounding his team, like injuries and the daily particulars, but on the topic of basketball in general, Cluess is not reticent about letting off a little steam.

His vexations include N.C.A.A. rules restricting summer workouts (“Let them play as much as they want”), the nap-inducing 35-second shot clock (“Go 24, don’t go 30”) and the declining skills of players coming out of Amateur Athletic Union leagues (“How many guys can shoot the ball nowadays?”).

But mostly, his blame for the trickling pace of the game focuses on too-zealous coaches unwilling to loosen the grips on their players, which is why Cluess might be considered college basketball’s resident libertarian. The Gaels (24-6) are the only Division I team to average 80 points a game in the last four seasons. And their record over that span is 91-39.

“I will never, ever play the game the other way,” Cluess said. “We’re not going to play like everyone else, just because every other coach is doing it. I’d throw up.”

Cluess’s offensive philosophy — the one he has used to lead the Gaels to three N.C.A.A. tournaments in the last four years and a 16-2 record in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference this year — is intrinsically basic. Run-and-gun. Pace is imperative. Remember Mike D’Antoni’s seven-seconds-or-less attack with the Phoenix Suns? Too slow, Cluess says.

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"We’re not going to play like everyone else, just because every other coach is doing it," Iona Coach Tim Cluess said. "I’d throw up."CreditIona College

It is not a free-for-all; the art of the fast break requires precision and repetition, so players can adjust to shooting quickly without rushing. But Cluess is also a vigilant observer of the flow of the game, and part of harnessing that is allowing his players the space to make plays on the fly.

His disregard for the other 99 percent of teams has seemed only to calcify over the years. As analysts fret over the future of offense, Cluess shakes his head.

“What’s happened? We’ve accepted mediocrity,” he said. “How many teams play differently out there now? If you really look at it, there are probably 10 to 15 offensive sets that 90 percent of Division I and N.B.A. teams run, in one form or another.”

The fastest warm-up drill in the country might take place at Hynes Athletic Center, where the Gaels start their practices with the shot clock at five. Then there are four-on-three drills, then three-on-two, then a scrimmage with the shot clock at 10. The early days of training camp are often spent on an outdoor track. Turnovers bring push-ups and missed free throws bring sprints.

The program runs on an endless reserve of energy. It is a requirement for a coach whose relationship with offense might seem, at first glance, like an obsession. At a practice recently, Cluess’s channeled focus during half-court drills appeared almost trancelike; he seemed not to notice as two young women, shooting video for a piece on guard Isaiah Williams, suddenly encroached on the midcourt huddle, a sacred place in basketball. The assistant coaches quietly ushered them away; Cluess can be known for his temper.

The self-discipline, the philosophy, the system, all of it is Cluess’s signature spin on the lessons he learned from Frank Morris, his coach at St. Agnes Cathedral High School in Rockville Centre, N.Y. When Cluess began coaching at St. Mary’s High School in Manhasset, N.Y., in 1991, he thought his players should be making 50 percent of their 3-point attempts.

“I looked at it and said, ‘This is the biggest joke,’ ” Cluess said. “ ‘This is the easiest shot in America.’ ”

Entering Friday, there were 215 Division I teams shooting below 35.1 percent from 3-point range this season. Iona, at 40.5 percent, was tied for ninth in Division I, with more 3-pointers made than all but one other team.

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A.J. English drove to the rim against Niagara. The Gaels start their practices with five seconds on the shot clock.CreditIona College

“If you talk to most guys and ask them, ‘Where do you play your best basketball?’ most of them will say, ‘At the park,’ ” Cluess said. “They’ll say, ‘That’s where I’m at my best because I’ve got the freedom to do what I can do.’ ”

In the college game today, though, “everything is handcuffed,” he said. “Guys are so worried about ‘where I need to be’ they’re missing the whole picture — having that freedom just to learn how to play basketball and learn the game, learn how to make decisions.”

As it turned out, watching Iona practice before its 79-75 victory on Friday against Manhattan — its fiercest rival and one of the nation’s staunchest defensive teams — was not an ideal opportunity for scouting offense. The Gaels had won 10 games in a row entering the game against Manhattan but had not cracked 72 points since Feb. 10. It was a relative drought, their longest such stretch since Cluess arrived in 2010.

Part of the reason has been the absence of Williams, who was averaging 14.2 points a game before sustaining a foot injury in mid-January. But the team was playing with an aberrant amount of timidity. Midway through Sunday’s come-from-behind victory over Monmouth, forward David Laury said, something clicked.

“Coach told us to do the 10-second drill,” Laury said, referring to Iona’s practice routine of shooting the ball before 10 seconds elapses on the shot clock.

There it was — Iona’s offense, footloose again. The Gaels scored 43 points in the second half.

“People think, ‘They play free, you’re giving them all this freedom,’ but it’s hard,” the assistant coach Jared Grasso said. “It’s hard to get your guys to play that fast all the time, to also share the ball, not turn the ball over, and those are things we’ve done at a really good clip.”

Toward the end of his lamentation, Cluess thought for a moment if there was any other program whose style he found entertaining.

“Loyola Marymount,” he said, referring to the team that averaged 122.4 points in 1990. “I enjoyed that.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section D, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Game ‘Stinks,’ So Coach Vents. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe